But where does this term come from? And what does it mean? The original concept was first coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in the 1980s as a way to describe many social justice problems such as racism and sexism which often overlapped, creating multiple levels of social injustice. Our social media feeds have been buzzing about intersectionality recently.

Ritesh Rajani, “diversity champion and geek” who serves as HR Diversity and Engagement Partner, Asia Pacific for IBM.

Mahumitha Venkatarman, Diversity and Inclusion Head, Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages.Mary-Frances Winters, D&I thought leader, master strategist and President and Founder, The Winters Group, Inc.Three top-notch speakers joined facilitator Tracy Ann Curtis of TAC Global in the discussion: The jumping off point for this piece was a recent DIAN India Virtual Meeting on Intersectionality. These concepts recognise that employees bring their whole selves to the workplace, and that their identities are not always easily categorised. While the concepts have important distinctions, as you will see below, both can be useful to creating a diversity and inclusion (D&I) programme that goes beyond the more traditional efforts to date which have often been focused largely on one dimension of employees’ lived experiences such as gender or sexual orientation.

This article explores two topics that are very much in the vernacular right now: intersectionality and multiple identities.

Intersectionality and social work